Franz Schubert
Franz Schubert (1797-1828) is an Austrian composer. He is most famous for his Gretchen am Spinnrade (1814), Erlkönig (1815), Die Forelle (1819), Winterreise (1822), Die schöne Müllerin (1823), 14th String Quartet (1824), Ellens Gesang III (famous for Ave Maria) (1825), Fantasia in F Minor (1828), Schwanengesang (1829) and his Unfinished Symphony.
Frank Zappa
In 1978, the year that Austria commemorated the 150th anniversary of Schubert's death, Zappa held a concert at the Wiener Stadthalle in Vienna on 3 February 1978. At this event, politician Erhard Busek dressed up as Schubert and shook hands with Frank Zappa.
Zappa also covered Schubert's Ave Maria three times live in 1978 and four times in 1980.
Frank Zappa about Franz Schubert
Rudi Dolezal: You like this Schubert?
Frank Zappa: "Yeah. I'm a very romantic person. You kidding?"
- Quoted from FZ's Cadillac Extravaganza, 1978.
"What I would like to see happen with it is to have concert halls designed to accommodate performance of six-channel playback, whether it's a six-channel miked ensemble, or pre-recorded material in six-channel. But to have some kind of an installation where people can come and hear it. It could even be like a coffeehouse-type thing, where you have a conversation while surrounded by a composition. That might be a nice environment. That's feasible. I understand that in Japan, at a Kyoto exposition, they had a multi-channel playback system. But it opens up the possibility of special suites in hotels or, if you can imagine, an audio spa. The potential of it reminds me of an historic place in Vienna called the Havelka. It's a coffee shop that has been there since Schubert, I guess, and the main entertainment is newspapers on a stick, and a little classical music in the background, and every known form of coffee and Viennese crullers – little pastry things with some powdered sugar sprinkled on top. This place is so bizarre, because there's not that much conversation, just people reading newspapers on a stick. It's owned by this old woman named Mrs. Havelka, who's been running it since birth, I think, and the walls are covered with things from famous composers and authors who paid their bill by writing "graphic currency." Vienna's funny that way. Apparently Wagner stayed at the Hotel Imperial one time, and to pay his bill he handed over some pages from Parsifal that are still on the wall in the coffee shop." - Frank Zappa in The Mother of All Interviews (Part 1), interview by Don Menn.
